Boomtown Fair 2016 raises nearly 100K for local and global charities

This summer's edition of Hampshire's largest festival, BoomTown Fair raised £98,654 for numerous local and global charities along with vital aid and awareness.

Charity, education, awareness, along with local engagement, are a large part of the ethos of Boomtown and the 60,000 capacity theatrical and immersive festival also donated money to local communities, supported many local businesses and provided tickets for local residents. 

The new Speakers' Corner welcomed a range of talks including a drug awareness message from Wendy Teasdil, the mother of Ellie Rowe; Maisie Williams discussing the growing refugee crisis and formal education; Jess Thom talking about living with Tourettes, as well as The White Ribbon Campaign launching their Safe Event Guide promoting awareness of sexual harassment and assault of women at events.

Dave Boardman from the White Ribbon Campaign said, "BoomTown Fair in Hampshire, one of the UK's biggest and brightest festivals, is leading the way with staff and volunteer training, information on how festival goers and others can help alleviate the problem and hopefully cut down on incidents."

The festival has many ways to raise money and aid including; £2 ticket donations, guest list donations, stewarding partnerships, onsite installations, a platform for awareness raising talks at their Speakers' Corner talks tent, and post event salvage operations such as eight bags of unclaimed clothing have been donated to Trinity Winchester.

Help for refugees included:

• A group of local community volunteers from Twyford collected 160 sleeping bags, 85 tents, 58 roll mats, 13 self-inflating mats, 17 rugs/blankets, plus quantities of miscellaneous clothing, shoes and wellies, canned food, pots and pans, lamps, pumps and chairs – all of which were donated to L'Auberge des Migrants in the Calais Jungle.
• Love Support Unite raised £2,410.
• Help Refugees raised £500 through their festival-wear stall, selling unsuitable clothes that had been donated to their warehouse in Calais.
• Refugee Community Kitchen raised £280.
• Festival Waste Reclamation and Distribution collected tents, sleeping bags, camping chairs, sleeping mats and clothes for Syria with the Portsmouth based Dont Hate Donate charity.

This year BoomTown matched the guestlist donations to generate £10,000 which will be split between the parishes bordering the festival site to invest in projects to benefit their communities, and Hampshire Air Ambulance were donated £7,255 through the ongoing stewarding partnership.

In the months before the festival the BoomTown KidzTown team held free family carnival workshops at the Discovery Centre for Winchester families alongside local charities Naomi House and Blue Apple theatre, where the children get to showcase their costumes and newly developed skills at the festivals' Sunday KidzTown carnival.

Local businesses were supported by the festival including a range of local Food Traders, and Hampshire based Market Traders made up 15% of the festival's market stall holders.  £46,380 was raised for Oxfam through the stewarding partnership, with a further £15,000 raised through their district themed Oxfam Shop, located in Mayfair Avenue. The multi-charity beneficiary stewarding organisation, My Cause also accrued £5,165 for a range of UK based and international charities.

The festival also supported global charities including the TEMWA Charity who ran the festival's onsite Lost and Found for which BoomTown donated £5,000 towards the charity and a further £500 was raised through grateful festival goers giving donations for being reunited with their belongings! The build crew from the South American styled area, Barrio Loco, raised £1,640 for Alianza Arkana, a ground-breaking grassroots project working with indigenous communities in the Amazon in Peru whose way of life is under threat from increasing development and industrialisation.

The year's environmental initiative with Energy Revolution led to 72,000kg of Co2 emissions accounted for through travel carbon offsetting ticket donations of £3,600. Boomtown also teamed up with Love Your Tent to bring a new initiative for the festival this year, with the idea of giving cheap 'disposable' tents more sentimental value to encourage people to take responsibility for their belongings and take them home.

Purple Community Fund, raised £489 selling their handbags, belts and jewellery made from ring pulls. In addition to the funds they also collected 5kg of ring pulls.

BoomTown Directors Lak Mitchell and Chris Rutherford, said, "It's a privilege to be a position to be able to support so many charities, locally and across the globe, the dramatic increase in funds raised that we can achieve in one year alone, is astounding. We look forward to the future and raising even more money, awareness and supplies for the now vital role many of these charities are fulfilling."

Boomtown continues to work closely with the local community, listening to feedback and implement changes and applying policies to ensure the disruption caused by the festival on the local community is minimised.

BoomTown are currently on the lookout for their main charity partner for the 2017 event and are looking for Winchester or Hampshire based charities, to apply or make a suggestion contact  local_community@boomtownfair.co.uk

BoomTown Chapter 9: 'Behind the Mask' will return to the Matterley Estate in the South Downs National Park from Thursday 10th to Sunday 13^th August 2017. Tickets go on sale at 7pm on Tuesday 1st November, and eFestivals will have links to buy them then.

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